A Preliminary data portrait of Oxfordshire

The Long and Short of it.

In December 2024 we published the full report of the Oxfordshire Doughnut Project.  The project involved three different work streams.  To aid discoverability, and for those only interested in the 'Oxfordshire Doughnut', we've sliced and diced the full report to extract the Data Portrait component only. 

The Oxfordshire Approach

The Doughnut journey in every town, city or region is necessarily 'place based' depending on funding, maturity of network and organisations. Some places, for example, begin the work of developing a Portrait of Place with the community portrait and wide-spread engagement, others begin with the data portrait. In Oxfordshire, this was our starting point.

With a small pot of grant funding from Oxfordshire County Council, and a fixed window for completion, a project team worked collaboratively with County Council officers to accelerate progress toward the data portrait of place. 

The goal? To create a preliminary data portrait of place, with visualisation, as a springboard for further engagement.

Methodology

We blended traditional desk research, the 4D design methodology, and agile collaborative working techniques to make as much progress as possible within the constraints of the project.

This approach may be particularly useful for time-and-funding constrained teams.

Our key tools were the 'data portrait of place tool', four lenses tool, and communities and regions tool. Our process closely mirrored the DEAL approach.

Together we;

🗺 Mapped Oxfordshire local priorities to the dimensions to unlock targets, data sources and to ensure the portrait is aligned to local priorities (this was partly done collaboratively during a workshop with County Council officers)

🔎 Agreed the criteria for selecting data: relevant to the identified Oxfordshire Council target, representative of specific challenges in Oxfordshire, available at the Oxfordshire level, updated annually for the indicator, publicly available and following trustworthy methodologies

🌀‘Unrolled the doughnut’ to build a data snapshot across all four lenses with a goal of visualising as many dimensions as possible in the ‘Oxfordshire Doughnut’

🎯 Identified visions and ambitions (targets) for each dimension. The vision column in our data sheet was an addition to the DEAL methodology to log existing visions,  for eventual alignment with tool integration and to baseline further engagement on thriving aspirations

✍🏽 Selected one representative data story - from target to snapshot - per dimension to communicate Oxfordshire’s performance. 

🚀 The OCC-Oxfordshire Doughnut project team, in partnership with key collaborators, decided the focus area based on a mix of OCC priorities, known Oxfordshire challenges, and available data. Decisions were largely made by a small team, at pace within the sprint period.

 
🛑 Thresholds - for the most part these don’t exist so these were subjectively calculated based on targets and / or national averages. These are unpacked in the data summaries in the report

The Oxfordshire Context

Oxfordshire is one of the wealthiest counties in the country.  It's also a hotbed of Academia and expertise in Nature Recovery, has a thriving Green Innovation scene, and is known as a 'social enterprise' County.  But the preliminary data portrait is sending us a clear message - in spite of all the great things happening in Oxfordshire, the County is breaching its share of planetary boundaries for almost every dimension and falling short for many on the social foundation.

Preliminary Data Portrait of Place - Headlines

📈 The Oxfordshire population is producing far more carbon emissions than is safe. On average, each person is responsible for nearly eight times more their fair share of carbon emissions.  (Global-Ecological lens)

💸 Oxfordshire’s relative wealth as a county is contributing disproportionately to poor social outcomes globally; a good standard of living for most in Oxfordshire relies on low wages, poor working conditions, poverty and lack of education among those outside our borders (Global-Social lens)

🛍 We are using more than our fair share of resources to feed our relatively comfortable life-styles.  (Global-Social, Global-Ecological)

⚖️ Here in Oxfordshire average earnings are high and most people enjoy long healthy lives. However, the local-social lens reveals that many are falling short; in all but one dimension, Oxfordshire breaches the social foundation - representing the minimum requirements for a decent life, or areas of critical deprivation. (Local-Social lens)

🐝 Our natural resources are at a critical point - water is under extreme stress, almost all stretches of Oxfordshire rivers are unswimmable and life-depleted. We have very little semi-natural habitats to house already critically-declining biodiversity through habitats. (Local and Global Ecological lenses)

Where to Next? 

The process has highlighted the value of portrait as both compass and a tool for making socio-ecological connections and driving mindset shift. 

The project also highlights the  challenge and opportunity with unlocking data and action gaps, reinforcing the importance of broad and inclusive engagement to enrich, evolve, and legitimise the work of the Doughnut. Further, global social and global ecological impacts point to critical role of local action to build a resilient, globally responsible Oxfordshire.

Some practical next steps for Oxfordshire County Council are proposed in the report , with a  key action for all to embrace preliminary data portrait as springboard for engagement and socialisation.

Specifically:

1. Investigate and establish a platform, process, and Governance for housing ‘living and evolving’ Doughnut 
2. Progress the Doughnut methodology to enrich the portrait with qualitative input to develop a compelling vision for thriving 
3. In partnership, and collaboratively, evolve and develop indicator, target and threshold selections with key stakeholders harnessing local expertise across climate and ecology 

This report will be the first time for many people to really engage with what the preliminary Doughnut is telling us so far.  This deserves space for reflection and consideration before diving into action.

# localsocial hashtag_lookup:#localsocial # localecological hashtag_lookup:#localecological
# globalsocial hashtag_lookup:#globalsocial
# globalecological hashtag_lookup:#globalecological
# fourlenses hashtag_lookup:#fourlenses
# dataportrait hashtag_lookup:#dataportrait

Download the data report directly here.

And find the link to the full report here.

https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/an-oxfordshire-doughnut-economics-project